Matteo Gilebbi

I am a Senior Lecturing Fellow and Cultural Advisor in the Romance Studies Department at Duke. I usually teach classes on Italian language and culture, but I had also the chance to teach a class entitled “Ita 390: Biopolitics-Bioethics-Ecoliterature,” in which students were asked to put into question the validity of an anthropocentric view of the world by first considering Italian modern and contemporary philosophical texts dealing with biopolitical and bioethical issues and then analyzing a variety of literary texts (including poetry, prose, and film) to help them reconfigure their understanding of the human/animal relationship, with all its biopolitical and bioethical implications.
My primary area of research is the interaction between literature, philosophy, and digital media in modern and contemporary culture, with a particular interest in animal studies. My recent publications take an eco-critical approach to Italian contemporary poetry and cinema, examining poets such as Ungaretti, Luzi, Volponi and Ferrari, and filmmakers such as Sorrentino, Garrone, Crialese and Rohrwacher. I am about to publish an article on the represenation of slutherhouse in Italian literature, a book chapter on the filming of animals in contemporary Italian cinema, and an inteview with eco-activist and eco-feminist Carol J. Adams, author of the groundbreaking work “The Sexual Politics of Meat.”